


Forging Magic

by RelenaDuo



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Age Regression/De-Aging, BAMF Bucky Barnes, BAMF Natasha Romanov, BAMF Steve Rogers, BAMF Tony Stark, Comedy, Dimension Travel, Drama, Dramedy, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-22
Updated: 2017-08-22
Packaged: 2018-12-18 17:37:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11879475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RelenaDuo/pseuds/RelenaDuo
Summary: In which the Avengers get thrust into the Harry Potter world de-aged and with new back stories. Basically it’s the Avengers being Harry Potter’s yearmates and how they live their lives in this strange new world.





	Forging Magic

**Author's Note:**

> I'm still not exactly sure how this came to me. Its not even completely finished yet, though I still wanted to post it, so here we are. A part of me feels guilty, first cause I have other stories that I should probably be dedicating my almost nonexistent free time to and secondly because I have no idea when I'll be able to update :x  
> Anyhoo, hope you enjoy!

It occurred to Tony that nobody had ever told him that this kind of things could be possible. He’d had to go and find out the hard way.

Sure, he’d pretty much given up any hopes of having a normal life the moment he’d told the world that he was Iron Man, but this was taking it to a whole new level of weird.

“Thony, leth’s go play!”, Lizzie – one of the smaller girls in this dump, who had just lost her front teeth to the tooth fairy – said excitedly.

Tony sighed in exasperation, “No Lizzie, I’m thinking.”

Maybe he should have put something in his contract that mentioned something about magic go wrong on battle – but then again he hadn’t exactly known that magic existed up until a couple months ago when he had been introduced to Strange.

“Come oooon Thony! You’re alwayth thinking!”, Lizzie insisted as she grabbed his arm and tried to pull him along.

Maybe he should have made a contract in the first place, seeing as he didn’t ever really get around to that part. In his defense, those kind of things weren’t normally his responsibility, they were Pepper’s.

“Come ooooooooooooooooooonnnnnn!”

He missed Pepper. She would know what to do with this clusterfuck they were all currently stuck in.

It had been just another mission. Nothing out of the ordinary. Strange had shown up the moment he sensed the magical entity whatshisname and proceeded to have a conversation that – If Tony had to be honest with himself – went over his head.

Magical jargon was _so_ not his thing.

The next thing he’d known was that he was in some backalley in London and looking – and feeling – like a ten year old.

This hadn’t been the worst that had happened him that day, oh no, not by a long shot. The worst had come when the police found him minutes after he finished having the panic attack that came with finding yourself de-aged and at unknown territory – it sure didn’t look like New York, where they had been fighting just moments ago – and then got hauled to the local orphanage where he got a lecture about escaping the safe confines of said orphanage.

Everybody he had met that were from this strange world treated him like he was Anthony Stark, orphaned at one year of age after his parents died in a car crash – at least they got that halfway right – and then got shipped off to this orphanage in particular, from which he had apparently escaped only a day or so ago and now they had finally dragged his ungrateful ass back.

What was interesting about this orphanage in particular – not including the mystery of what they did to their treacle tarts, which Tony swears are actually poisonous and not apt for human consumption – is that all the other Avengers also ended up at the same place and at the same age as Tony.

They all also had different sob stories about how they became orphaned resembling in some way or another how they had lost their parents back at their world.

As the nuns who ran the orphanage told it, they had all escaped a day before they found themselves on this new world. It had taken the police a full day to trap most of them, two to catch Scott, Thor and Loki – what _he_ was doing there with all of them was something Tony was still having trouble fully understanding – three to catch Nat and Clint.

Once they had all come together at the orphanage they held a secret meeting in the backyard, behind some bushes that would make seeing them a little more difficult, they began to discuss what the hell had happened. All heads were pointed at Strange, of course.

Strange, disappointingly, was as confused as the rest of them as to why they had all de-aged, ended up at the same orphanage and had full backstories to their names. It comforted Tony in some way that even this level of bullshit wasn’t normal in the magical community.

After some heavy arguing – mostly originating around the fact that Thor had apparently snuck Loki to their battlefield as part of his project for redeeming Loki, or something along those lines which confused Tony, and the fact that Steve had dragged his currently recovering from years of trauma best friend, the Winter Soldier, to the battlefield also in some attempt to help him which confused Tony – they decided that they would stay put for the time being and analyze their options till they were sure they could leave and survive out there in the streets. It had pained them, Tony most of all, to admit that in their current form they were basically useless.

So there they were, the Avengers, stuck in some lame orphanage until the same magic that had brought them there took them back to their world.

Tony really hated his life right now.

* * *

 

It had been a few months since they had decided to stay until any further viable option presented itself and most of them were eleven years old now, according to the nuns, that is. The only ones that were still ten – still according to the nuns, that is – were Wanda, Vision and Loki.

Thinking about Vision made Tony wince. Through all the magic and whatnot that they all had gotten through, Vision had not changed his appearance, he was still as red as the day he was born with a yellow stone on his forehead.

It had become a team effort to defend him from not only the children’s bullying, but also the nuns’ believe that he was in some sort of way cursed – they at least didn’t think he was possessed and in need of an exorcism or something, apparently they thought he was too polite for that. So they settled for cursed instead, which mostly involved lots of praying for him, which the team was fine with, just as long as they didn’t try anything funny with him – and not to mention the things people said when they came looking for children to adopt. One lady had outright fainted.

None of them had gotten even close to being adopted – not that were trying to, they were planning on sticking together through this weirdness – there had only been that incident once where some old lady had seen shy little Wanda playing with the smaller girls of the orphanage and had commented on how sweet she was and went over to talk to her.

Wanda hadn’t told the team what she’d told the old lady, but Tony had seen the old lady hurry away as fast as her cane allowed her after she’d talked for some minutes with Wanda.

Tony stole an extra cookie that day and gave it to Wanda with a wink.

Life was almost starting to make sense to Tony at the orphanage and that’s why the next day they all received funny letters made out of parchment.

The only one who thought it was exciting was Strange and that was because his name really did do him justice.

Tony, on the other hand, was not too excited about joining some school of magic with weird people with overly complicated names running it.

A day or so later a lady in antiquated clothes showed up at the orphanage door alongside some dude in black that hadn’t washed his hair in some time, both claiming to be there to talk to the ‘children’ about some scholarship.

Then, when they had all been crammed into some room for ‘some privacy would be great, please’ as the lady had put it, the same lady tells them they _all_ have magic.

T’challa and Tony snort simultaneously. Nat and Barnes do not roll their eyes, but Tony can see the twitch in their eyes as they suppress the need for it. Strange and Thor are both looking exited and Loki and Wanda are trying to be discreet about their interest on the subject.

Then the lady transforms into a cat and –HOLY SHIT she just _transformed into a cat_!

“Magic does indeed exist Mr. Stark, Mr. Udaku”, she says this as she looks them both pointedly in the eye, “And you both have it.”

“So they’ll both be able to transform into cats?”, asks Sam, looking at T’Challa with a wide grin.

“Sam!”, Steve exclaims.

“Not necessarily, some of you may develop Animagus abilities – that’s the ability to transform into animals – over the years, yet some of you may not. It’s a very difficult branch of Transfiguration, which is, by the way the class I teach. Professor Snape here teaches Potions. We have several other classes as well at Hogwarts and by your third year you’ll be able to take extra classes.”

She had Tony’s attention, “Tell me more about these classes.”

Later Rhodey would tell him how much of a nerd he looked like as he took turns with Strange to question both Professors about the classes that Hogwarts offered and when could they leave and if they could leave right then regardless.

It’s just that now that Tony has been explained how magic works and the very real possibility that he might have it and be able to participate in these classes, his interest has been peeked. The whole idea of going to Hogwarts and leaving the stuffy nuns behind also peeked his interest.

The next day Professor McGonagall was back with dour Professor Snape and this time they wanted to talk to all of them privately – as in one on one – to explain about their financial status.

Tony was instantly making plans to make money so that none of them would run short for any reason – yes, that also included Loki and Barnes, a much as Tony disliked them they are now also part of the team.

He was halfway through a sketch of a new prototype of the arc reactor when Snape let out a sour faced Scott and calls him in.

What follows is the weirdest version has ever heard about his parents’ life and this includes that time Fury told him about how his father founded SHIELD with Steve’s girlfriend.

So, apparently, in this world his parents had been fervent opposers of some dude known as He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, AKA, the Dark Lord as Snape referred to him once, which got them killed by one of his cronies while they were on a trip. Which left Tony being picked up by the non-magical police – or Muggle Aurors, as Snape called them – and dropped off at the orphanage.

Tony wasn’t sure if he should become angry or just start laughing hysterically.

He settled for a, “What”, and listened to Snape’s drawl as he repeated everything he had just said to him, but slower this time.

After leaving the office Tony began questioning the rest of the team about their made up background stories and if they had also inherited a vault at the magic bank.

“It’s called Gringotts, Tony”, said Strange exasperatedly.

Turned out only a few of them had magical parents in this world. Only Thor, Loki, T’challa, Rhodey, Nat and himself were of magical families, of which only the Odinsons – Loki had been making faces ever since he heard his last name – Udaku and Stark families were rich. The rest all came from non-magical families or, in Vision’s case, from some unknown place that didn’t provide them with a magical vault with magical money.

“It’s not magical money Tony, it’s just normal gold, silver and copper coins”, Strange had argued.

“All money is magical”, Tony quipped for which he received multiple eye rolls, including Nat. Barnes’ eyes only twitched, but Tony considered it success.

A few days later McGonagall and Snape were back, this time to take them to the magical shopping alley to buy their magical shit with their magical money. Strange had by this time stopped trying to correct Tony and was immediately lost to them when they walked past the bookstore.

If it wasn’t for the prospect of money waiting for them at the magical bank they would never have detached Strange from the bookstore unless somebody did something drastic.

To the relief of all of them, those who did not come from rich families were covered by the fund the school had just in case orphaned children wanted to go to the school. Tony’s opinion of the school increased by several notches when he found this out, yet he was still determined to help out all of those that ran short with their magical money. Like Strange for example, Tony could see there would be a problem once they got back to the bookstore, so could Strange apparently, cause Tony heard him ask McGonagall if there was a library at the school.

“Of course Mr. Strange, the biggest of all Europe”, she answered.

Tony swears that he saw Strange’s eyes sparkle at that moment.

The ones that had vaults were all crammed into a cart with Snape while McGonagall stayed behind to settle things with the goblins regarding the school fund. Why in the name of all things holy had the magical world thought it a good idea to put their money in the hands of these ugly creatures was beyond Tony.

The Odinson vault was pretty well off, the Stark vault was better off and the Udaku was the best off of them all. T’challa, the bastard, didn’t even look impressed with his vault’s contents.

At the end the part of the whole magical bank visit was the cart trip which he made sure to brag about to the other Avengers as soon as they began leaving the place.

Their first stop was at the wand shop where some got their wands at the first go and some took ages. It took both Wanda and Strange almost ten minutes each to find their wands – or for their wands to find them? Magic was confusing.

They were quickly herded to the bookstore where McGonagall had to physically pry Strange’s hands away from more than one book and then drag him outside and proceed to the Apothecary.

Tony, just like at the bookstore, bought enough of everything he needed and didn’t need at the same time, splurging his money like there was no tomorrow. Cauldron made of gold? Of course. Weird goo-y stuff that cost almost as much as said cauldron and that he probably would never use? Of course.

Both Snape and McGonagall were deeply exasperated by him, even if Snape was very good at hiding and would probably deny it if asked, Tony could still tell.

Then they had to separate them into those who could afford new robes and those who couldn’t. It made Tony even more motivated to find a way to earn money so that the team wouldn’t have to worry whether they could afford new magical clothes or not.

They met back near the entrance of the magical alley when they were all done and were told that they were allowed to buy a pet with their school-provided money. Damn, Tony was really impressed with what the school fund was willing to pay for.

Upon entering the magical pet shop Tony and Loki immediately began fighting over a three meter long python. Tony wanted it because it was big and impressive and also because he is Tony. Loki wanted it because he likes snakes and this one was the biggest one of them all – and also because he is Loki.

Snape broke up their fight when he informed them that unfortunately they couldn’t take such a big snake to the school as a pet.

It made Tony lose all interest in pets, so he went outside and sat with the others who also didn’t want a pet. He wouldn’t have time for a pet anyways, he told himself as he sat glumly on the steps of the shop.

At the end Clint got a falcon, T’challa a cat, Loki a smaller snake and Vision an owl – Scott had complained loudly about their lack of an ant farm.

As they had been waiting for the few that wanted pets Tony had gone to take a look at the magical broom shop from which he refused to budge unless he could buy one.

“Brooms are not allowed for first years Mr. Stark”, said Snape in his usual drawl.

“But I won’t fly it! I promise! I’ll only be looking into how it works!”, Tony argued.

Snape didn’t seem to believe him, “Regardless of your plans concerning a broom, you can’t have one Mr. Stark. Wait till next year.”

Eventually even Steve had gotten tired of waiting for him to finish arguing with Snape, so he just picked him up and carried him out the alley. It was a good thing they had all preserved their powers from their original lives since Tony thrashed all the way back to the non-magical streets and if Steve wasn’t as strong as he was it would have taken a lot of effort to tear Tony away from his new favorite place in the world.

* * *

 

The day they would leave for Hogwarts had finally arrived and they were all packed up and sitting by the orphanage’s door long before the nuns came to let them out. They took the underground to King Cross station and followed Steve – who was the only one that had volunteered to McGonagall to learn exactly how the portal worked to get to the magical side of the station – who counted out loudly each number of the platforms and finally stopped when they reached platform nine and then began instructing them to walk through the wall.

Surprising absolutely no one Strange went through first, followed closely by Loki and eventually Thor. It took some time, but they were all able to get through the portal and rush into the magical train and find a compartment where they literary had to pile their trunks upon each other because there was barely space to fit them all in, but damn it if they were going to start their weird magical school life separated.

“We will do this, together”, said Steve once more once the last of them had managed to crawl into the compartment and find a place on the racks which were normally meant for luggage.

“Gertrude doesn’t like it here”, said Clint as he tried to calm his falcon in her cage, who hadn’t stopped screeching since the moment they got on the train.

“Sic fuzzball on her T’challa”, said Tony, covering his ears and trying to remember how likely falcons were to attack their owners.

“His name isn’t fuzzball”, said T’challa as he gently petted his cat.

Whatever, thought Tony as he rolled his eyes. Clint was also glaring at him.

After a few hours, half of which Gertrude had spent screeching – it scared off anybody that came even near their compartment, except that girl with the boy with the missing toad and the cart lady – they finally arrived at the train station where they were told to leave their stuff behind and to follow a giant across a lake.

When all this was done, Tony was writing a book about this. He’s sure he’d get a fortune from it.

* * *

 

The staff meeting of Hogwarts right before the school year officially began was conducted a few hours before the train arrived at Hogsmeade.

This year there was much excitement, what with Harry Potter finally being old enough to join Hogwarts. What was also cause for some excitement was the discovery of several hires for old wizarding families that had been thought lost and had surprised a lot of people when they showed up on the Hogwarts list of alumni. What had been even more surprising was finding them in a Muggle orphanage with several other muggle-borns.

Right now, they were discussing these new, unexpected children.

“Let us start with the Stark hire”, said Dumbledore, his eyes twinkling as they had been when he found out that the Starks had left behind a hire.

Both Minerva and Severus either sighed or looked rather disgruntled.

“He’s – well, very immature”, said Minerva amicably.

“He’s trouble”, muttered Severus.

“I’m sure he’ll grow out of it”, said Dumbledore.

Both Minerva and Severus looked unsure.

“Which House do you think he’ll be in?”, asked Filius cheerily.

“Gryffindor”, muttered Severus.

“He does look like he’d fit in well with the Lions”, said Minerva pensively.

“What about the Odinson children?”, asked Pomona.

“Gryffindors”, mutters Severus.

“Maybe not the youngest one”, noted Minerva.

“And the Udaku hire?”

Minerva shook her head, “I honestly have no idea, he was so silent the whole time. It’s impossible to know from the little he spoke.”

“What about the muggle-born children?”, asked Sinistra.

“And the Romanov child?”, asked Vector.

“There is something that we should discuss about one of the muggle-borns”, said Minerva, immediately catching everybody’s attention, “As far as I can tell he is some sort of metamorphmagus and at some moment something went terribly wrong and he got stuck in his appearance. His skin is bright red with lines and he has this strange yellow protrusion on his forehead. I’m afraid he’ll be terribly teased.”

“This does indeed sound troublesome”, said Dumbledore, “Is there anything we could do for him Poppy?”

“If he really is a metamorphmagus, interfering in one if his natural transformations could be dangerous”, mused Poppy, “But I guess a look won’t do him any harm.”

“That is settled then”, said Dumbledore, “Any other thing you wish to add Minerva, Severus?”

“They seem to be very close knitted group”, said Minerva after a few moments of thought.

“I’m sure they’ll do fine”, said Dumbledore, “And once they get sorted into their new Houses they will make new friends and form new groups.”

* * *

 

“A Troll?!”, shouted Tony and stalked over to the ginger boy, “If they are seriously expecting me to wrestle a Troll to figure out my House then they’ll have another one coming! I’m suing them six ways to Sunday before they can even say ‘begin the battle’”, Tony shook his head in indignation, “A Troll!”

“Uh”, the ginger boy took a few steps away from Tony towards the scrawny boy with the glasses, “I’m not sure if it’s true – especially cause it was Fred n’ George that told me.”

Tony narrowed his eyes at him, then rolled them and gave a huff, “Well fine, but still. Let them just think about doing shit like that and I’ll –“

“For the love of everything, just shut up Tony”, groaned Steve, his face covered by both his hands.

Just as Tony was winding up for another rant McGonagall came in to lead them to the Great Hall where a hat sang to them.

A hat. Yeah, Tony thought, he could deal with that.

As soon as they found out that the list was in alphabetical order Steve went to stand by Barnes’ side and give him his patriotic smile of encouragement.

Finally, Barnes was called.

“Barnes, James!”

They all waited in baited breathing as the hat took its sweet time to decide where Barnes belonged.

“HUFFLEPUFF!”

Huh, house of the loyal, eh? Well, all those months with Steve must have done him some good.

Almost immediately after Legolas was called.

“Barton, Clint!”

It took some time, though not as long as with Barnes before it gave its answer.

“HUFFLEPUFF!”

After some time McGonagall called one of them again.

“Lang, Scott!”

It didn’t take the hat as long as it did with Barnes to decide this time.

“RAVENCLAW!”

The house in blue clapped happily.

“Maximoff, Wanda!”, McGonagall called after some other names.

This time, the hat took its sweet time. Again.

Why couldn’t it be always like with that Malfoy kid who had barely even touched the hat?

“SLYTHERIN!”

And they had even ended in the same house! Tony was beginning to wonder if the hat was faulty or something.

“Odinson, Loki!”, was eventually called.

This time the hat didn’t need much time.

“SLYTHERIN!”

Immediately afterwards Thor was called.

“Odinson, Thor!”

Again, the hat barely need any time at all.

“GRYFFINDOR!”

And then this Potter boy got called and everybody freaked out and they were all so excited and Tony didn’t get it at all until Strange commented that’s the boy that defeated the guy whose name nobody would say. Huh. He was still scrawny in Tony’s books though.

“Rhodes, James!”

Tony was applauding long before the hats said-

“GRYFFINDOR!”

And then Steve got called and Tony tried to begin clapping again, but Nat stopped him.

 “GRYFFINDOR!”

The hat barely needed time to decide that and Tony decided that maybe it wasn’t faulty after all.

“Romanov, Natasha!”

Again, the hat didn’t really need any time at all.

“SLYTHERIN!”

Now, though, the next one to be called was a difficult one and Tony knew it would be ugly if they forced Vision to take his hood off. Vision was also going to be called for the first time by the last name the nuns at the orphanage gave him.

“Smith, Vision!”

Vision went over and fortunately McGonagall didn’t make him take his hood off, but everybody could still see his chin and Tony could hear some murmuring going on about the redness of it.

“GRYFFINDOR!”

It all went smoothly and Tony was so relieved he almost forgot that he was the next one to be called. Almost.

“Stark, Anthony!”

Tony went cheerily to sit on the stool and put the hat on.

It could freaking speak in his mind. The thing was looking into his memories and was basically reading his mind. He was thisclose from ripping it off and storming up to the headmaster, five complaints with full arguments already thought – six, if you counted the one where he simply said ‘I’m Tony Stark’ – but then the hat quickly shouted-

“RAVENCLAW!”

McGonagall took the hat away and sent him off to his new table before he could even start on her about personal privacy – but then he focused on the cheering crowd and went to his people.

Next, Strange was being called and even if they no longer had beards Tony still hoped for his awesome facial hair bro to end up in his house.

The hat didn’t disappoint.

“RAVENCLAW!”

Tony clapped the hardest of them all, along with Scott.

“Udaku, T’challa!”

T’challa went to sit on the stool like he owned it and it didn’t take the hat long to rummage through his brain before it proclaimed-

“HUFFLEPUFF!”

Only one left over.

“Wilson, Samuel!”

“HUFFLEPUFF!”

There was a whole crowd of them over at the Hufflepuff table clapping for him.

Tony almost wished that the mission in which they’d gotten transported to this world had required a code green so Bruce could be with him, there at Ravenclaw. But then he thinks about the other guy and how none of them would be able to handle him now if he were to turn so Tony settles with what he has.

* * *

 

Tony liked the Ravenclaw Tower. He liked it so much, in fact, that he spend the whole first night reading all the books he could lay his hands on after making sure the dorm room was up to his standards.

Strange never even made it that far. He also wasn’t an incurable insomniac like Tony so he fell asleep among a pile of books with a cushion from the armchair under his head.

They both had to be bodily dragged out of the common room to assist breakfast, where Tony immediately ditched his house and went over to the Gryffindor table and stole one of Steve’s sausages from his plate.

“Damn, this place has good food”, he said as he sat down at Steve’s side, “Hey, ginger, pass a plate over here!”

“What are you doing here?”, said the ginger instead of passing him his plate.

“I’m here to eat, duh, now pass me that plate you’re holding there.”

“But this isn’t your House table!”

“Ugh, fine, don’t want to pass me the plate then don’t. Hey, glasses! Pass me a plate will you?”

The boy with the glasses was either awestruck with him or too befuddled to think too much about his request so he passed it to him.

“Great. Thanks”, he began piling it with everything he had in sight, “Now, Stevie-boy, start telling me everything about that tower of yours.”

“How do you know we live in a tower?”, asked ginger and was then looking at him with suspicion, “And what do you want to know about it?”

“Relax”, said Steve in his patriotic soothing voice, “I’ll handle this”, he turns to look at Tony, “It’s very golden, with lots of bright red in it.”

Tony moans around his second sausage, “Why can’t we have such a nice tower?”, he pouts.

“I’m sure it’s still a nice place, even if it isn’t bright red and gold”, said Steve pleasingly.

Normally Tony didn’t like to be placated, but for that once he allowed it, “I guess”, he shrugged and then sighed a deep, forlorn sigh.

“You’re nuts”, he heard the ginger say at his side and ignored him.

It all proceeded calmly from there on. Tony went to his first class of magic ever – Charms – and was delighted to be one of the first to figure out how to work the spell – Strange came first, but Tony knew he wasn’t going to be beating the Sorcerer Supreme in his game any time soon.

At his first free period he gathered Rhodey and Clint to explore the castle, later joined Thor’s expedition consisting of Loki, Nat and Wanda, found out what was in the hidden corridor – Thor was making plans to explore what was underneath the trapdoor and had promised Tony to come call him when he was ready to go – talked with a bunch of ghosts, had Sam join them when they went to search for the Aviary to visit Gertrude and they weren’t even late for class.

The homework was a joke to Tony who did it all in a few minutes and then went to join Strange at his fort made out of books in one of the corners of the Tower.

Things would continue calmly, he would choose a random table to sit at and bicker with whoever was sitting there – none of the team respected much the house boundaries placed on the tables – go to classes, explore, have lunch, visit the library where he would often find Loki researching magical creatures and then after some time musical instruments, go to some more classes, do his homework at a speed that made all his yearmates weep with jealousy – except Strange and Scott, Strange still did his homework so fast that Tony had never even seen him work on it – and then read. Scott would often call him a nerd for this, but he would also do it at the same time he was bent over a table trying to build a homemade ant farm.

Tony couldn’t wait for the day in which Scott would swarm the whole Tower in his ants and see everybody’s expression.

Tony being, well, Tony, also held out an ear for gossip from the rest of the team, seeing as they couldn’t really meet as often as they would like to and Ravenclaw had very few classes with Slytherin and Gryffindor, so this was often the only means by which he got to hear some stuff.

And boy, was there interesting stuff to hear!

Like the time when Gryffindor and Slytherin had their first flying lesson and Nat had afterwards scared the ever living shit out of that Malfoy boy for being a bully. And the time Steve had tried to step in between a duel between children and had somehow also found out what was in the forbidden corridor as a result, and the unfolding hilarious rivalry between the glasses boy and the Malfoy boy and how Steve kept trying to talk sense into both of them.

Then Dumbledore sent glasses boy a broom and Tony would have found his blatant favoritism to be the most hilarious thing of all if Snape hadn’t denied him a broom before the start of the year. So as it stood, Dumbledore could go fuck himself.

And then it was Halloween.

Even as Tony was mourning the now long past times of children dressing up as himself and the rest of the team he was forced out of his musings and away from his meal when Professor Lame – AKA, Professor Quirrell – came running into the Great Hall announcing that a Troll had broken into the castle.

Tony wanted to stay with his warm plate of lasagna, seeing as the Troll was in the dungeons and they were all far from danger, but the prefect had known him for a long time so he simply picked Tony up and marched away with him thrown over his shoulder.

Tony was more than ready to grow the fuck up already.

Later, Tony would hear about Steve, Barnes and Sam’s heroism when they saved the lives of three children that had gotten caught in a bathroom not too far from the Great Hall by the Troll that turned out not to be in the dungeons.

When people heard that a ‘Puffy’, as they called them, had run up straight to a Troll, punched it so hard that it snapped the Troll equivalent of a femur and then came back without so much a scratch to his common room, respect never felt before was given for the house.

Barnes was instantly his house’s hero.

When Christmas began nearing Thor approached him with the news that they would explore what was underneath the trapdoor a few days before the end of vacations and if he was still willing to go with them on their ‘great adventure’.

Tony instantly signed up and even Steve’s righteous indignation when he found out what they were planning to do when Thor invited him along wasn’t enough to dampen the spirits of all those involved. Except for Loki. Loki thought they were all being reckless and that Thor hadn’t learned anything.

Nobody paid Loki any attention – except Thor, who for some mystery still loved his brother which he then took almost a whole day to convince to come along.

On the night just before the vacations ended Tony snuck out of the Tower, leaving Strange and Scott to cover for him in case something happened at the Tower. Strange had been offered to come along as well as Scott, but Strange still hadn’t read through all the books at the Tower and Scott’s ant farm was finally beginning to take off and he wanted to keep a close eye on them and make sure they found their way around the Tower where Scott had placed sugar cubes for them. Had it been any other day and Thor hadn’t invited him along Tony would have stayed to observe the ants with Scott.

He was still trying to figure out how he trained them to do his bidding.

* * *

 

The walk from the Ravenclaw Tower to the forbidden corridor was almost the most exciting part of all the night.

He’d almost gotten himself caught by Mrs. Norris and Snape as he snuck to join the team at the door of the Cerberus. Thor was there, along with Loki, Steve, Barnes, Sam, Vision, Clint, Nat, Wanda and surprisingly, T’challa.

Wanda, who had a nice voice, was chosen to sing so she sang some sort of Sokovian lullaby till the Cerberus was fast asleep. Cap and Thor lifted up the trapdoor and Loki threw in some glowing orbs to light what was underneath.

“It’s some sort of shrubbery”, he mused as he tried to peer closer.

“Hey, look, there’s a collar around the Cerberus that says ‘Fluffy’!”, said Clint as he inspected the possibly murderous animal closer.

“What kind of nutjob names his Cerberus ‘Fluffy’?”, wondered Sam out aloud while the rest of them wondered it in silence.

Tony peered into the trapdoor hole in the floor, “If it’s just shrubbery, why don’t we simply jump? It’s not too high to cause any injuries.”

Steve sighed, “Let me go first then”, he said before launching himself in without any sort of precaution, causing Barnes to almost have a mini meltdown.

“Stevie!”, he rushed towards the trapdoor.

“I’m fine!”, called Steve, “It’s a very soft plant!”

Not needing any further prompting Thor jumped in next followed closely by Barnes. Seeing as nothing had happened to them Sam and Clint jumped in next followed by Tony and Wanda, with Vision on their tails.

They were trampling the shrub something awful, which might explain why it halfheartedly tried to attack them, but by the time Nat, T’challa and Loki had also jumped through and trampled all over the plant it wasn’t doing much besides twitching.

Next they found a room full of flying keys and a couple brooms. Tony and Thor were on the pair before anybody else could even argue about it and chasing keys. Vision soon joined them afterwards and was the one to catch the right key at the end.

The next room revealed the biggest set of chess Tony had ever seen.

“Who knows how to play this?”, asked Thor. Most heads turned to look at Tony.

“Fine, but I’m no champion”, he said went to play the game. They soon discovered that they had to take the place of the pieces and Tony found his work to be cut out for him since there were so many of his pieces that ended up being human. Still, he was determined to win.

He ended up having to sacrifice Cap and Clint’s pieces. Clint was lucky and was only thrown out wildly out of the board, but Cap was hit pretty hard on the head. Had it been anybody else he would probably have been unconscious.

The next room had a Troll and they were all quick to let the same people as before deal with it. Barnes delivered yet another astounding blow to the creature’s leg, Sam was playing distraction as Cap jumped and hit it square in the face, knocking it out.

Next came some room with a riddle and Loki solved almost immediately.

“Fine, who’s going to go further? There is at best enough potion for three of you”, Loki pointed out.

After some discussion, Cap was voted to go as team leader along with Thor, whose idea it was to make the expedition. After some further debate it was decided that Tony would go along in case they ran into something where brains were needed more than brawns.

When they all came through into the chamber-like room they found themselves with Dumbledore and McGonagall in front of some mirror and holding a red stone in front of it.

“Um, oops?”, Tony tried and gave them all a flashing smile that he hoped conveyed his innocence in whatever he had just happened upon.

* * *

 

Needless to say, Dumbledore wasn’t too happy with them being there and McGonagall was very explicit every time she mentioned to Dumbledore that eleven children had effortlessly managed to do what an adult wasn’t supposed to be able to.

Dumbledore gave her the stink-eye whenever she renewed her rant, but still looked chastised enough that he didn’t do anything worse that giving them all a lecture, taking off a few points and giving them detention.

Next day Rhodey found him to give him the ‘I told you so’ speech he had probably been rehearsing the whole night before.

About a week after classes started again they were all notified to report to Hagrid at night for their detention. Tony had been sure that the main objecting of their detention in the Forbidden Forest was more to scare them than anything else until he found himself face to face with a Unicorn-blood-sucking creature, who probably figured he could suck a bit out of Tony as well.

Well, fuck no, that’s what. Before anybody could stop him he punched the creature as hard as he could. Had he still been an adult the effect would probably have been very good, but since he was physically eleven it didn’t.

Fortunately Steve was in the same group as Tony and was able to swiftly jump in between the blood-sucker and Tony and give it a real punch this time. Steve might be physically eleven, but the super soldier serum still ran strong in him.

The sound of bone breaking and a loud ‘uff’ came from the blood-sucker as it was thrown to the ground by the force of the punch was quickly followed by Cap shouting, “RUN!”, which they all obeyed without any preamble whatsoever.

They ran towards Hagrid’s group, collected those of the team that had been separated from them at the beginning of the detention and ran away with them, all while screaming curses and shouting at each other. Some sort of man-horse or horse-man appeared to them while they were running, but Cap was on a roll that night so he just punched it out of the way and ran on, the rest of them following behind.

And Strange had been jealous that he didn’t get to know the Forbidden Forest.

* * *

 

The next day Tony was fortunately spared from going to his first class, Defense, since their doofus teacher had done something clumsy and gotten his face broken so he wasn’t able to give classes.

Good riddance, Tony called it and spent his free morning observing Scott’s ants build themselves what looked like a miniature gothic-styled castle in the common room. Several people were now tracking the ants’ progress with fascination.

That night Nat, Loki, Barnes and Clint teamed up and defeated some evil spirit living in the back of their Defense teacher’s head.

Thor had moaned rather loudly at the fact that Loki had not told him about this beforehand and Cap had just shook his head in disappointment and that had been enough to guilt-trip Barnes into spilling what had really happened.

Apparently they had all noticed something off with their Defense teacher along the year and when he had his face broken a day after Cap had broken the face of the blood-sucker they decided to do some recon and then found the guy talking to a head on his back and planning to go after some sort of source of eternal life so they decided to just end it there.

This all didn’t stop Tony from making a pouty face at Nat and telling her she still could have just called him.

This also made Tony work harder on his magic resistant cellphone prototype.

Sitting in extra hours at the makeshift lab he had made for himself in an unused classroom near the Tower – which he’d gotten permission for from Flitwick, who loved interesting experiments almost as much as Tony did – didn’t even faze his exam scores when the exams came up. Tony barely studied for them and yet he still came in second of his year, not even that bushy-haired girl beating him – Strange still came first, since he was still the Sorcerer Supreme and with all the reading he was doing Tony was beginning to doubt if he would ever be able to catch up to him.

Though even Tony was buried deep enough in his work he still heard the story of Steve being out in the middle of the night with some of the school children and almost getting caught when they had come back from smuggling a dragon out of the school.

Tony had made a break in his research to ask Steve why he hadn’t invited him along. Bushy haired girl naturally got enraged at him and promptly stomped off.

But now the year was already over and Tony was being forced to leave his precious research behind since he was going back to the orphanage. This didn’t stop him from trying to hide in the castle instead of boarding the train, but apparently there was some spell in place in case some children overslept or, you know, tried to simply stay at Hogwarts.

There were days where Tony really wasn’t impressed with these people’s magic.

* * *

 

It had been a long year for Albus Dumbledore. He had first been forced to change his whole defense mechanism for the Stone after eleven first years had managed to get through the whole trial. Then, he had just began to prepare himself against whatever was in the Forest that could scare the children so much when he found out that a couple of those same children had taken on Voldemort’s spirit while it was possessing Quirrell and won.

Albus Wulfric Percival Brian Dumbledore wondered how in the holy name of Merlin could four first years take down the spirit of Voldemort?!

Sure, had it been Harry the one to somehow confront Voldemort and win, Dumbledore would not have been too surprised, but these children had no blood magic protecting them!

“That Barnes boy is a menace”, Severus said at their end of the year meeting.

Nobody felt ready to argue with him over that.

“Romanov is also one”, Severus added after he realized nobody was going to argue with him over Barnes.

“She’s just very protective”, Pomona argued. She had been the one to closest witness the bizarre friendship between Hufflepuff Clint Barton and Slytherin Natasha Romanoff.

Severus seemed to at least grudgingly accept this, “What about Odinson? The elder one.”

“He’s very protective of his little brother”, said Minerva, “And he’s a very sweet boy. Have you seen how much he’s helped Longbottom come out of his shell?”

Even Severus had to agree to that.

“What if we rather talk about Loki Odinson?”, prompted Minerva, “And don’t you tell me you don’t know what I’m talking about, we all here know that the boy is trying to take control of the social pyramid in Slytherin! Draco Malfoy has even completely stopped his childish rivalry with Potter so he can dedicate all his time to fighting back Odinson!”

This was also true. Dumbledore had last seen such a masterful manipulator in Voldemort. He would be much more concerned if it wasn’t for the obviously strong relationship between not only Loki and his brother, but also with the rest of the orphaned children. His fight against Voldemort strengthened his opinion that the younger Odinson was no threat.

“Can we please talk about the wonder that is Steven Strange?”, said Filius, beaming with pride, “Not every year do we get a child so bright that he breaks records set by Merlin himself!”

At this, Dumbledore had to agree, Steven Strange was quite possibly the brightest wizard to ever walk the earth and was only getting better every day.

“We should watch him more closely”, said Severus and Dumbledore couldn’t help but to agree with him. The brightest often turn dark when the world stops seeming as interesting as it did before.

Some of the teachers tried to protest at that, but they all ultimately saw his point and reluctantly agreed.

Even if it pained them, Dumbledore was almost always right.


End file.
